Friday, June 6, 2008

We made it! It’s Friday! People, the countdown is on over here. I have exactly six days of work left to go before we head off on one hell of a vacation. One with a pit stop for a wedding and all of that. Have I mentioned here that we are going to Nova Scotia? And that I’ve never been there before? As much as I love, love, love going back to my favorite places (New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, Portland) I equally love heading off to points unknown. And I have always wanted to go to Nova Scotia. And we get to take a ferry (please, please, let the waters be calm…my oldest friend on this planet is out there reading this and giggling because she watched me get ghastly seasick somewhere on a boat headed for Ireland…very, very ghastly indeed). Anyway. Suffice to say that I am having serious trouble concentrating on any one thing for very long.

Fortunately I work with very nice people who so far have been completely understanding of my mental state. In fact, my library people threw me a fantastic surprise party yesterday which absolutely knocked my socks off. Lotsa good food, three homegrown bouquets, a beautiful plant, and get this: a spendy gift card to a hardware store. Which killed me, because evidently there was a raging debate about whether to give us a gift card to Bed Bath & Beyond (oh my god just thinking about going there gives me hives) or the store with all the chainsaws and hammers and paint scrapers. Tee hee.

Ok, the last chicken introduction of the week: this here is a chicken, one of two, that we have had a hell of a time naming. She’s a Rhode Island Red and we have two of her; so far we can’t reliably tell them apart from one another. There have been so many naming attempts and none of them have stuck. Right now we are calling them The Rubies, but I am not sure if that’s going to work either. They kind of need a group name, since telling them apart is annoying. Any suggestions out there? We collected a ton of great chicken names from all of our friends, but none of them are doing the job. As it turns out, naming a chicken takes some work sometimes. Anyway, these are our dopey girls. We think that they might have been a little younger than the other chicks, as their wing growth was always just a step behind everyone else. They don’t exactly get picked on, but it’s clear that they are usually a step behind the pack. They get the end of the roosting pole, if you know what I mean. They sure are pretty though, two little redheads. Just for kicks, here is one of them just a few short weeks ago and then again a few even shorter weeks before that. Holy cotton balls, they were so tiny then!

Your gardens are so beautiful! I used to live in marshall and raise chickens and grow so much of my food. Now that I live downtown Asheville I find growing food really difficult (more pests, more disease, more pollution, more critters)...thanks for taking these beautiful pictures and giving me something to look forward to again when I am done living downtown :)